The Death Of The A-list — It's July 2008. Robert Scoble walks the early morning iphone3G line yelling “you're live on the internet” while broadcasting live on his Nokia phone via Qik.com. But does anyone care what he's doing or knows who he is? From the looks of the dreary eyed people in line …

Jason's long goodbye: Give me a break — I know that the goodbye post written by Mahalo supremo Jason Calacanis for his blog is supposedly heartfelt, and full of what he no doubt believes (or hopes we will believe) is authentic human emotion, but it still feels all wrong. Is it the fact that it reads like a bad script?

Facebook's Payment System Nigh? — AllFacebook is reporting that some users have noticed an SSL version of Facebook upon signing in (notice the “https” in lieu of regular “http” in the address bar below). — Why would Facebook be deploying secure connections? Perhaps it just wants to secure the transmission of user passwords.

Signs Point to Payment Platform Launch — Mike Germano of Carrot Creative posted a tweet earlier today that mentioned he was getting an SSL version of Facebook showing up. Why would Facebook need and SSL version of their site up and running? Technically they don't currently …

European retailers sell out at iPhone 3G launch — European retailers were sold out of the new iPhone 3G before stores in the US even opened on Friday, thanks in part to strong marketing from Apple's mobile partners. — The initial sales surge not only blew through stores' inventory …

Viacom: Easy Tiger, We Don't Want Your Data — Viacom doesn't want to know what you watch on YouTube, so you can all relax. At least, that's what an representative from the company told me Friday. The blog-o-sphere (us included) erupted over the past week after a judge ordered YouTube …

Can't Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone — SAN FRANCISCO — The secret to finding the perfect parking spot in congested cities is usually just a matter of luck. But drivers here will get some help from an innocuous tab of plastic that will soon be glued to the streets.

Microsoft Announces Futuristic-Looking Arc Mouse — We received a festive press kit in the mail today from Microsoft with details of their impending peripheral releases for the 2008 Holiday season. What immediately caught our eye was the new Arc Mouse, a collapsible wireless mouse designed to be both stylish and portable.

Google Co-founders Talk Tech — Trio dishes on Microsoft, branded mobile phones — Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt sat down unexpectedly Thursday for 75 minutes with a dozen journalists to give their impressions on the state of the technology community and Google's place in it.

Giving Sh*t Away is not a Business Strategy — I read two stories about companies adopting Open Source this week which give some interesting food for thought when juxtaposed. — The first is a blog post on C|Net from Matt Asay titled Ballmer: We'll look at open source, but we won't touch where he writes

How the iPhone App Store Will Kill iPhone Web Apps — Now that the App store is up and running and the millions across the globe that have waited for chat applications and games finally have a service available to them to get most of what they need on their iPhone and iPod touch …

PaidContent's Rafat Ali Speaks! So, Here's Who's Next... Earlier today, BoomTown broke the stunning-for-blogs news that ContentNext, owner of the popular online digital media news site paidContent, was being bought by the Guardian Media Group for about $30 million in an earn-out acquisition.